


close your eyes

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M, Makeup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 00:32:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3361178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a week for Mizael to admit he’s doing it wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	close your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know anymore. I was in a writing rut because of The Rook and sibylline and ended up writing this to de-stress because bekumiza is So Important so.
> 
> dumps this here.
> 
> enjoy the fluff!

An hour after Mizael locks himself up in the bathroom, toting a plastic bag full of drugstore brand makeup, there is a scream of frustration.

“You okay in there?” Vector asks from his position, lazing on the couch watching shitty daytime television. It’s a bad Italian dub of some German drama, and he knows fuck-all about what’s going on because neither of those languages are Japanese, but it’s the only channel they have that isn’t either the news or the weather network, so he’s stuck with it.

But whatever’s happening in the bathroom sounds way more interesting that what seems to be the wedding crasher plot twist everyone was expecting.

“I’m _fine_ , asshole,” Mizael says hotly. “I’m-- FUCK.”

“Need some help in there?” Vector asks, curious. “Because, you know--”

The bathroom door slams open and Mizael stomps out, apparently having given up all hope. Vector peers over the back of the couch to see him waving a mascara wand dramatically.

“I can’t _do_ this! It’s so hard, all the tutorials make it looks so easy and then there’s _me_ stabbing myself in the eyes and just, ugh. How do I replace all my tattoos like this?”

Vector regards him for a moment. “You mean _that’s_ what your shopping spree was about?”

Mizael huffs. “Yeah.”

Vector laughs harder than he did at the stupid drama. “Fucking hell. Bring your makeup over and sit your ass down. I’ll do it for you.”

Mizael scoffs at him. “Yeah, like you can do any better.”

“Hey, hey, why do you think my eyelashes don’t match my hair?” Vector asks, batting his lashes. “Now sit the fuck down so I don’t have to hear you have sex with yourself in the bathroom anymore.”

Mizael’s face heats up. “I do _not_!”

Vector snickers. “You sound like it.”

“Ugh, whatever. Just try to do better,” Mizael challenges, shoving his makeup bag into Vector’s chest as he sits down on the couch. “I just want my tattoos back, so nothing _funny_ okay?” His eyes, winged with uneven liner, look awful and completely unintimidating, one with awkwardly clumped black lashes while the other’s still blonde and wispy and bare.

Vector just raises an eyebrow at him. “Did you buy makeup remover?”

“Of course I did, what do you take me for?” Mizael says irritably, digging through the bag to find wipes. “See?”

“Okay, okay,” Vector laughs again, taking the pack and pulling one out. “Come closer, I can’t reach your pretty face from here.”

Mizael rolls his eyes and shuffles closer, crossing his legs as he shifts to face Vector.

“Okay, now close your eyes or this is gonna sting like a motherfucker.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Mizael just scowls, eyes sliding shut. Vector painstakingly wipes away all of the horribly applied colours that Mizael obviously has no idea how to use, including the bright red lipstick he tried to outline his Barian facial markings with, and tries his best not to crack up. As he presses at Mizael’s eyes to get the last of the liquid liner off, Mizael groans.

“Was everything really that bad?”

“Pretty much. We’re starting over. Did you buy brushes?”

“You use brushes to put this stuff on?”

Mizael really is a total newbie.

“That’s fine, I’ll just use my fingers. You can open your eyes now.”

Vector rummages through the bag, wondering why there’s no concealer or foundation in sight, and sighs. “We need to get you a kit. But, whatever,” he says, pulling a handful of different black eyeliners and fanning them out in his hands. “Why are none of these felt liners? Felt is the godsend of eyeliners.”

“I don’t know? The lady recomme--”

“The most expensive ones, probably.”

“Doesn’t more money mean better quality?”

Vector smirks. Oh naive Mizael. “If that’s your logic, why didn’t you go to Sephora?”

“Sephora?”

Vector pulls the receipt out of the bag, looking at the total. Durbe’s going to go insane. “Okay, fuck this, we’re going on a shopping trip because you’re a moron who doesn’t know shit about makeup.”

“What?” Mizael asks, and he looks downright offended. “Just? Can’t I just borrow _your_ makeup if mine is so bad? Just, show me. I can figure it out!”

Vector pins him with a pointed look. “I’ll do your eyes before we go,” he says. “But that’s it. You’re not getting your marks back till we have some proper primer and liners.”

He picks a random liner, a pencil one, and leans in. “Close your eyes.”

\+ + + + +

After that day, Mizael has come to a silent, unspoken, grudging respect for Vector and his makeup skills.

It becomes a daily thing: in the mornings, before they leave to catch the monorail to Heartland High, Vector does Mizael’s makeup. Primer, foundation, concealer, bronzer, eyeliner, mascara, and lipgloss. And every day, Mizael complains because the first day he showed up with red markings was the last day Vector ever did them for him (something about no distracting makeup in class, and maybe he got sent home, and maybe some other kids started making fun of him, but who _cares_ because they’re _his_ ).

Sometimes they try new things, and Vector nicks Merag’s eyeshadow palettes so he can make Mizael’s eyes bigger, or narrower, or deeper. One day Mizael picks up tape so he can try life without monolids for a day, but Vector hates it on him so they never do it again.

“Do I really need this much makeup?” Mizael asks one day. “Like, am I really that awful-looking?”

Vector laughs. “No, this is just the way you said you want to look. Do you wanna try less?”

“I… don’t know. Would I look okay with less?”

Vector just shrugs. “We can try it.”

“Okay.”

“Close your eyes.”

\+ + + + +

Mizael’s not even trying to learn on his own anymore, relying on Vector to see him through his morning routine because it’s become a daily thing and neither of them see any reason to stop. They’ve finally invested in a brushset for Mizael, so Vector can do things his fingers were never enough for, like blend and smudge without it going everywhere and making Mizael look like a raccoon.

When Vector’s mascara runs out, he asks to borrow Mizael’s.

Mizael raises a confused eyebrow at him, and Vector laughs. “I ran out, what can I say? Wanna see me do mine before we get started?”

“Actually, yeah.”

Vector digs his makeup bag out from the back of the cabinet. It’s filled with exactly four items: a bottle of concealer, a felt eyeliner, an empty mascara bottle that he throws out, and a stick of lipbalm.

“You barely use anything!” Mizael observes, appalled.

“I barely go out,” Vector shoots back with a shrug.

He starts with the concealer, patting it under his eyes with his fingers, and then over a scar he still has, a faint white line under his cheekbone. Somehow he manages to blend it all in perfectly. Then he uncaps the liner, applying it with short strokes that Mizael remembers feeling on his own lash line, but seeing it go on is completely different. Vector doesn’t wing it out like he does for Mizael, though, leaving it blunt (and Mizael thinks it suits him better that way). Vector’s long, red eyelashes turn black with a few swipes of mascara, and then he ends with his lipbalm.

“All done,” Vector announces, dropping the lipbalm back into his bag. “Your turn.”

“Try doing that with me. Just that.”

Vector’s brow shoots up. “Really? You’re gonna try low maintenance?”

“Think I can’t pull it off?”

“Heh. Okay then, we’ll see,” Vector says with a smirk, before taking out the same four items from Mizael’s bag. “Close your eyes.”

\+ + + + +

“Your skin is gonna go to hell if you don’t take care of it,” Vector says, pulling packet facials. Sephora came out with two new ones a couple weeks back, and Vector figured it was time for some skincare because Mizael’s skin is starting to dry up and his complaining about it is getting tiring.

“So what do you do with those?” Mizael asks, regarding the colourful discs with curiosity.

“Well, you wash your face,” Vector starts, “then you unfold these and put them on your face for like… what, fifteen minutes? And then your take them off, throw them out, then rub the product into your face. And then, ta-da, no more awkward teenage acne or something!”

“Okay. Let’s do it, then.”

When Mizael’s unfolding his, he looks at Vector questioningly. “How do I do this?”

Vector just laughs and takes it from him. “I’ll do it for you. Close your eyes.”

\+ + + + +

There’s a dance at Heartland High, and Yuma’s convinced everyone to come. Nasch, of course, caved for him, but he wasn’t going to do it unless he dragged the rest of them with him, so now the entire household is getting ready for the event and no one has a clue what they’re doing because dances mean no school uniforms.

“Merag won’t let us borrow any palettes till she’s decided what she wants to wear,” Mizael says, barging into Vector’s room and looking highly disappointed. “But, we can start anyway, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Vector says, getting up and dusting off his sweatpants. “Bathroom?”

“Merag’s in there, so I took our stuff out,” Mizael says, holding up their two makeup bags. A while ago they decided to upgrade from their tiny complementary bags to cute, floral, matching ones. Mizael’s is a blue hue that matches his eyes, while Vector’s is, of course, black. “Is the lighting in here good enough?”

Vector always keeps his room as dark as he can make it, dimming his lights to the lowest setting and barely ever opening the curtains, but he figures he can make an exception.

“It can be,” he says, moving to flick the lights on. “You can sit on my bed. Or the floor, wherever.”

Mizael’s bare face stares back at Vector once again, like so many other times, blonde lashes framing his eyes (awkwardly, Mizael always said, but Vector’s always thought they were cute without black mascara on them).

“What do you want me to do today?”

Mizael shrugs. “I don’t know. Whatever you think?”

Vector wonders when that kind of trust became a thing, because he’s been given creative freedom a lot lately, and Mizael’s always happy with it.

“Sure. Close your eyes.”

Dances always have terrible lighting, so Vector skips the foundation because why bother. He adds a gold eyeshadow stick to Mizael’s lids and waterline, and wings out the eyeliner a bit more than usual.

“What colour lipgloss?”

“I don’t know, what colours have I got?” Mizael opens his eyes, digging through his bag. “Clear’s probably fine? It’ll be dark anyway, right?”

“Sure.”

Vector twists the gloss open and glances up at Mizael again. Mizael, who looks perfect even without any of this (but this is what he wants to look like, and this is perfect too).

“Close your eyes. Mind if I try something new?”

“Go ahead.”

Vector leans in this time and presses his lips to Mizael’s.

\+ + + + +

Mizael is still blushing bright red when they get to the monorail station, and he refuses to answer any questions as to why.

Vector asks him to save the last dance.

\+ + + + +

It’s a slow song.


End file.
